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Appendix B. DOS Resurrected

If you don’t quite have a grasp on the
concept of DOS, here’s a crash course on MS-DOS (short for
Microsoft Disk Operating System). DOS has been included with PCs
since the very first IBM PCs in the early 1980s, and even the newest
PCs still use it to some extent. DOS was the PC operating system used
before Microsoft Windows became the standard. All versions of Windows
from 1.0 to 3.11 relied on DOS; Windows was thought of only as an
extension, because one needed to load DOS before starting Windows.
Windows 9x /Me is still based somewhat on MS-DOS for compatibility
with the vast majority of available software and hardware products,
but it does a good job of hiding this dependence. Microsoft has made
Windows NT and Windows 2000 completely independent of MS-DOS but
still makes available the command prompt from within Windows for
those who need the functionality.

In previous versions of Windows, you could unload Windows, leaving
only DOS, which was useful for running older applications and DOS
games, as well as certain troubleshooting tactics. Each successive
version of Windows goes to greater lengths to obscure DOS; Microsoft
has actually hobbled many DOS features for Windows Me, including the
ability to make bootable diskettes (other than the Windows Startup
Disk, as described in Chapter 6 ).

DOS is our friend, as well as our foe. It had better be, because Windows Me requires it to function. This means, more or less, that Windows is susceptible to many ...

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